


When Good Boys Become Warriors

by Subtle_Salieri



Category: New Warriors
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen, Korean War, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 10:14:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/760211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Subtle_Salieri/pseuds/Subtle_Salieri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New Warriors World War II/Korean War AU, loosely inspired by those cool pictures of Rich Rider as a WWI fighter pilot, and because I was reading "Things They Carried" this week. I ended up having the two meet halfway and in those two wars instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Good Boys Become Warriors

Rich was gung-ho and ready to go when he heard there was a war on. when he found out the US wasn’t joining that war  _right this red hot screaming second_ , his immediate reaction was to ship himself over to join the RAF and their 75th Squadron, nicknamed “Nova Corps” by its members for its explosively high counts of German planes shot down. He had a buddy, he said, by the name of Quill who suggested it — ‘pparently a somewhat uncontrollable pilot who led bombing raids without carefully-thought out planning. For a reckless guy like that, though, he did pretty good. So did Rich.

Dwayne ended up following him, but as an engineer for the RAF at large, and a great one, but one who got little respect, because these damn idiots who espoused freedom and were against tyranny were also against the ‘tyranny’ of not treating people different from you like shit. He couldn’t fight, which pissed him off, but he sewed that anger inside of him and fixed up the planes to be the best damn planes taking down Nazis in this crazy war. In ten years, he did get to fight — he wasn’t sure if it was worth it, then.

Robbie was far underweight and far underage to join up, that he wouldn’t even be able to trick them into it, and he just stayed behind. He was the kid, until ten years later. Then none of them were.

 When he touched down once, in France, before it was taken completely, Rich met a Jewish kid who ran away and had trekked across Europe and the Western front nipped at his heels — all the way to Bordeaux from Sudetenland, he said. Astrovik, was his last name. He had an innocence in his face and Rich sent a letter to his friends living in New York to see if they could help him trick the kid in, circumvent the Jewish quota. They at least got that. He lived with Robbie and Angel for a while until the next war came and he had to lose the innocence in his face.

Rich had been sticking with the Novas until the Battle of Berlin. This was where they were going to win critically. The casualty counts predicted only gave Rich a little concern. 75th went out to rain hell upon their enemies. 

The Novas and their crews rained out of the skies, alongside hundreds of others. Rich almost crashed into the Reichstag. He managed to pilot his plane back, carefully, to the shores of England, where it just shlumped down.

That changed him. He still served, but he was one of the only pilots who had the red star all the Novas carefully applied to their helmets. He still flew, but the skies were empty without the other stars. He flew in Europe until the Berlin airlift, but when Korea became a crisis he shipped out there. He found himself back among friends who hadn’t seen the 75th’s shooting stars crashing. Dwayne, still angry, still brilliant and unrecognized, but allowed to work that anger out against things that didn’t clang but against things that bled and screamed, had a bloody kill count that rather intimidated Astrovik, their semi-assimilated companion. When he first plunges a machete dead-on into the skull of a renegade soldier about to massacre the lot of them, he’s shaking, terrified that he could just  _kill_  something, somebody, someone who might have a family. Rich and Robbie reassure him throughout the night that he’s not evil, that it’s war, that the fuck had it coming, that he wasn’t like the Nazis who took away his own family, not at all, not at all. 

Except he bleed like them. Rich... wasn't at ease about this war. It seemed... wrong. he didn't understand the orders from the brass, they seemed... Maybe the poor guy just... 

He has to push that nagging crisis of conscience for what he signed up for, when a grenade almost blows Robbie, who was a kid and is a kid and will always be a kid to Rich no matter how many bullets he fires, straight to hell, and he’s screaming and his fair blonde hair is streaked in blood and he has to pry open his own damn kit and bandage up his own damn bloody arm and leg and side, and back at camp they’re all silent as he tries not to cry because he can’t hold a damn  _pistol_ or even a damn _pencil_ without his hand clamming up, and they turn pages of comics for him with names like  _True Crime_ and  _Green Lantern_  and rip open the extra M&Ms packets for him to suck on so he can have a taste of being a kid and not just scream in his shrill childish voice.   __  


Of them all, Rich is the veteran. And their shock and horror and rage that eventually all jells into jadedness, desensitization in this warzone reminds him of a cocky pilot who flew with the stars that burned bright until they were overcome.

And he still keeps his helmet and wishes on the shooting stars that he wishes weren’t his corpsmates.


End file.
